The preferred embodiment concerns a method to generate a template.
Templates are frequently used in the generation of documents. They comprise basic contents and/or layout information for the document and serve as a document model (for example as a form) on the basis of which an individual document such as an invoice is generated and then output to an output system (for example to a printing system).
A method and a system to automatically prepare print data for a printing process is described in the as of yet unpublished Patent Application DE 10 2006
047 436. In this method, automatic presentation parameters for print data are generated. The generation of the presentation parameters occurs with, among other things, the aid of an image analysis method so that the physical variables that are associated with the print data as presentation parameters directly or after further analysis are extracted from the print data. According to known methods, output parameters with which the printing process is controlled can be developed using the presentation parameters.
Furthermore, preflight programs are known with which digital print data for offset printing can be monitored. In offset printing it is typical that initially a film is generated at which the print image can be checked. A printing plate that is used in the offset machine is exposed with this film. In digital offset printing the print data are generated and prepared digitally without it being necessary to expose a film. Since here the review at the film is omitted, preflight programs have been established with which a print image can be reviewed for correctness at a computer. Known preflight programs are, for example, PreFlight Pro™ or, respectively, FlightCheck™. Such preflight programs can also be used in digital printing methods in which at least one printing group is controlled digitally and per-pixel to generate a print image. Corresponding digital printing systems can be, for example, electrographic printing apparatuses (in particular electrophotographic printing apparatuses), inkjet printing apparatuses, ionographic or magnetographic printing apparatuses. Additional digital printing systems are described in, for example, “Digital Printing, Technology and printing techniques of Océ digital printing presses”, 9th edition, February 2005 (ISBN 3-00-001081-5), Chapters 4 and 5.
Preflight programs have proven themselves well for the review of a print image in the field of offset printing. In digital printing methods, printing apparatuses with significantly different scope of services and varying print quality are used, such that the different print qualities also lead to a different realization of the print images on the print medium. However, this is a requirement for the use of preflight programs with settings that should merely transfer the functionality of the database.
Frequently documents for everyday use such as invoices, sales letters or the like are produced in large numbers with digital printing apparatuses in which typically the areal coverage of the print image can be controlled per pixel and individually for every subject (for example in that print heads can be activated individually per pixel), in which everyday documents every single produced document normally differs at least partially from the other documents, however. The documents are thereby frequently based on form templates such as, for example, an invoice form with the letterhead of the invoicing party. The differences of the individual documents are in, for example, different addresses of the invoice recipients, in different invoice amounts etc. A large variability thus exists. Therefore for digital printing apparatuses the preparation and association of the print data has a significantly greater importance than in offset printing, in which normally large editions of an identical document are produced. In digital printing methods the printing apparatuses are additionally frequently directly controlled with print data from computers. Digital printing apparatuses are, for example, electrophotographic, magnetographic, ionographic, thermotransfer or inkjet printing apparatuses. The printing apparatuses can exhibit speeds of, for example, 100 to over 1,000 pages per minute in the DIN A4 format in high-capacity printing. An additional significant difference relative to offset printing lies in the digital printing method in that the digital printing method enables significantly different print qualities depending on the printing device and selected setting. These print qualities differ primarily in the resolution and in the color space (black-and-white printing, highlight color printing with one or more highlight color colors, full color printing), On the other hand, the workflows in digital printing methods and classical printing methods (for example offset printing) continue to converge. For example, in offset printing there are already methods that handle all data digitally up to the exposure of the printing plates. Furthermore, the same printing formats—for example the Portable Document Format (PDF) are increasingly used in digital printing methods and in offset printing.
One cause for printing problems in digital printing methods lies in that the print data (and therefore also the document processing data) often originate from different sources that use the most different programs. The computer programs used for this can be provided on large-scale mainframe computer systems, for example, wherein data are extracted from large databases, but can also be typical word processing programs running on personal computers or programs for the preparation of presentations, for example Microsoft PowerPoint®. They can also be professional layout programs such as QuarkXPress®, Freehand® or Pagemaker®.
In the already aforementioned book “Digital Printing, Technology and Printing techniques of Océ digital printing presses”, 9th edition, in Chapter 18.2 an Order Distribution System (ODS) is described that is also designated as a workflow manager. The entire digital printing process, which comprises a print pre-stage, a high-capacity printer and a final processing, can be controlled with this order distribution system. Image and text files from different sources (such as scanners, digital cameras, data media or a computer network) are merged in a print pre-stage and brought into their final form at a layout station. A printer driver subsequently converts the data generated on different platforms into Postscript files, for example. These files can then be relayed to a print server for printing. Print servers convert the data into compressed bitmaps that are imposed wholly automatically and relayed to the printing system. The print server controls the printing process. The final processing of the print product comprises, for example, the binding or insertion of separator sheets.
The order distribution system is moreover responsible for the central administration of the production variants. The printing service for intranet and internet users also belongs to this. The order distribution system informs users about enabled production variants, accepts print jobs together with a digital job portfolio, and initiates the automatic execution up to the printing. The order distribution system also monitors the correct execution of the selected printing and post-processing options.
The order distribution system here executes job tickets that contain the control parameters to control the printout of print data of a print job as files in a specific data format. A job ticket can thereby be generated by a user upon generation of the print job or automatically in a printing system. The job tickets have unique instructions that are to be correspondingly converted.
Document processing processes, in particular printing processes, are becoming increasingly more comprehensive since increasingly more apparatuses are integrated into the respective process, whereby the functionality increases. Additionally, such processes are increasingly executed with regional distribution via the internet and intranet, for example are associated with a pool of printers that can be regionally distributed. Moreover, apparatuses of different manufacturers must increasingly work together in a process. In order to grow to meet these increased requirements, a uniform specification for the exchange of data formats was agreed upon that is designated as a job definition format (JDF). For this there is a corresponding job message format (JMF) that is correspondingly specified. The specification of JDF can be downloaded from the Internet site www.cip4.org; and at the time the current specification is JDF Specification Release 1.3.
JDF is an XML-based format in which the process instructions are arranged in a tree structure. Every node of the tree structure comprises an instruction or a set of instructions. The uppermost node is designated as a root. The end nodes at branches are designated as leaf nodes.
A feature of JDF is that it can provide what are known as intent nodes that contain a very general instruction for a process that must be rendered more precisely in order to be able to be executed at an apparatus.
From EP-A2-1 197 838 a method for processing of print jobs in a network is known in which, using a job ticket, it is checked whether a printing service has the resources necessary to execute the print job.
A printing system with multiple different stand-alone printing apparatuses of different design and with at least one print server arises from WO 00/49489 A. The print server receives print data from a print data source and distributes them to the stand-alone printing apparatuses. If the printing system contains the pre- and post-processing apparatuses associated with the printing apparatuses, a page-precise tracking of the print pages is implemented. A page-precise restarting of the printing operation can thereby occur if a fault occurs in one of the apparatuses.
In WO 00/68877 A a method is described in which print data are provided for printing in a logical page order corresponding to one or more signatures. The provision can occur within a production process for print goods (workflow) (for example in a host computer); in a computer upstream of a printing apparatus (print server); or also at another workstation (client computer). The provision in particular occurs as an imposition pattern in a production control program.
A system to print hybrid documents arises from US 2005/0185222 A1. What are to be understood by hybrid documents are those that have regions that are to be printed both in color and in black-and-white. This system has a color printer and a black-and-white printer. The corresponding pages are separated with a print manager and supplied to the respective printing apparatus. At the output of the system the pages printed by the different printers are automatically sorted in the correct order. This sorting takes place in the black-and-white printer to which the recording media printed by the color printer are supplied. With this system it should be avoided that a plurality of recording media are printed with only a single color at a color printer.
From U.S. Pat. No. 6,407,821 B1 it is known to integrate objects of other print data languages such as Postscript (PS) or Portable Document Format (PDF) into data streams of the Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) and Mixed Object Document Content Architecture (MO:DCA) print data languages (whose command sets also correspond in large part to those of the Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS) print data language), what is known as embedding. For this special identifier fields (what are known as object container identifiers) are provided in the data streams or, respectively, the print data languages that enable it to reference the objects of the other printer languages as resources. For example, individual or multiple pages in the PDF format can thereby be embedded as an object into an AFP print data stream.
In the book “Digital Printing Technology, and Printing Techniques of Océ Digital Printing Presses” (at the cited location), in Chapter 15 a server system designated with the trade name Océ PRISMAproduction® is described that processes or converts a broad palette of data sets that are then printed on high-capacity digital printers in the Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS) print data format. The Oce PRISMAproduction server system comprises a print job manager PJM (see Chapters 15.2.4 and 18.2) with which print jobs are generated at an arbitrary customer client and executed and administered in this server system. The print job manager is also designated as a print job manager.
Software modules that attend to central tasks are designated as “servers”. Software modules that are connected to a server and receive data from the server or communicate data to this are designated as “clients”. Multiple clients can simultaneously be in contact with a server.
In client/server systems, print jobs are normally generated by the clients. A print job comprises the print data to be printed and a job ticket that contains control parameters to control the output of the print data.
The incoming print jobs are monitored and possibly modified at the clients upstream of the print job manager. This modification can comprise data or information accompanying the print job, wherein the content of the job ticket is adapted to the print environment. It is also possible that a job ticket is created in the first place at the print job manager from the data accompanying the print job and a specification ticket present at the print job. The format of possible incoming job tickets is for the most part appropriate; however, parameters are often contained in these that are not usable or even lead to conflicts. Job tickets thus possibly contain printer names that are not present in the existing printing system. To correct such incorrect job tickets, computer programs that automatically monitor the job tickets and correct them as necessary are provided at the clients. These computer programs are programmed individually as scripts for the individual clients and their applications or, respectively, the respective source of the print job. It is also typical that multiple such scripts are provided at a client in order to respectively revise different sources or job tickets with print data in different data formats. These scripts have proven to be very useful because the incoming print jobs are automatically monitored and adapted with these so that the entire printing process can run without delay.
Methods to automatically process process data instructions in the form of job tickets in a print server are described in the not previously published Patent Application DE 10 2007 009737.
The aforementioned publications and as of yet unpublished Patent Applications are herewith incorporated by reference into the present Specification.
For a better understanding of the present preferred embodiment, a few terms are explained in the following:
A complete job contains at least one document processing job, in particular a print job.
A print job (job) contains at least one print file to be printed.
A complete job ticket (order ticket) contains information about a complete job, for example delivery address, job date, desired delivery date etc.
A job ticket contains data usable to execute a print job. These data comprise control parameters that are relevant in a workflow for the print job (job workflow). The job ticket is encoded in a corresponding ticket format.
A specification job ticket contains standard data that are suitable to output a print job that contains no additional processing information in an existing printing system or an existing print environment. Such data are control parameters and can, for example, be names or addresses of printing apparatuses that are connected to the respective print server.
What is to be understood by a data ticket is information that is generated by a system generating a print job, for example print job generated by (mainframe computer system) together with the print data. Depending on the system, the scope of such data can be very limited and/or their format can possibly be non-standardized, which is why they are not viewed as job tickets in the above sense.
The job chaperone data can comprise both a complete job ticket, a job ticket and/or a data ticket or control parameters that are attached to a print job in a different form. Control parameters are more often inserted into the file name of the print job. These job chaperone data can in fact exist in the most different forms (job ticket, file name etc.). However, the are always explicitly present.
A template is a document specification that is characterized by content and layout information. Such templates are provided and used in current word processing systems and desktop publishing systems, for example in the widespread word processing system Microsoft Word. The layout and frequently also a portion of the document content is prepared or set as a form by means of known templates.
What is to be understood by an image in the following is, in the broadest sense, the particular graphical presentation or reproduction of a data object (in particular a document page), and in the narrower sense a data object that is encoded, presented or reproduced in a rastered format (image format, pixel format) or a vector format.